The separatist

Leader of Catalonia Artur Mas

European Voice

11/28/12, 9:00 PM CET

Updated 1/25/16, 6:18 PM CET

Artur Mas put a brave face on his setback. The leader of Catalonia had called early elections for 25 November, promising to organise a vote on independence. To be able to call a vote, he had needed to boost his party’s seats in the regional parliament from 62 to 68; instead, his party lost seats, dropping to 50.

But, at least rhetorically, Mas was prepared for a setback. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and when they do that, you know you are starting to win”, he said at a pre-election rally, quoting from the father of Indian independence, Gandhi.

Such a bald portrayal of himself as a champion of independence is new, though no one doubts Mas’s lifelong commitment to greater power for Catalonia. He was long the understudy of Jordi Pujol, the leader of Catalonia’s nationalists from 1980 to 2003. But Mas had been seen as a pragmatic liberal. The heat of the independence debate also fits uneasily with Mas’s long-standing image, as a cultured moderate.

Mas, though, does things his way. Ramón Tremosa, a member of Mas’s Convergència i Unió Catalunya (CiU) and a liberal member of the European Parliament, describes Mas as a rara avis – a rare bird – in Spanish politics, in part because he speaks French and English fluently. A lover of French literature, he can recite the poems of Verlaine and Baudelaire by heart.

Unusually for Spain’s political class, he also began his career in business, starting in 1979 after studying economics and law in Barcelona. Business was almost part of his DNA: the families of both of his parents were prominent in business, in the metallurgical and textile sectors.

One of four children, Mas rose rapidly to senior positions. However, he soon moved into the public sector, taking a position in 1982 with the development agency promoting inward investment into Catalonia. (He also married that year; he now has three children.) In 1987, he ran for public office for the first time, joining Barcelona’s city council. In 1995, Pujol appointed him regional minister of infrastructure; later, Pujol gave him the economics portfolio. His rise continued: in 2001, he was appointed Catalonia’s vice-president and in 2003 he succeeded Pujol and won regional elections. But victory did not bring power. Instead, the Socialists formed a three-party coalition from which the CIU was excluded.

Over seven years in opposition, Mas confirmed his reputation for moderation. “He is a Nordic among Mediterraneans”, Tremosa says (though the comparison is perhaps coloured by nationalists’ penchant for suggesting that Catalonia is a northern European economy).

Mas’s transformation began in 2010, when the CiU won power and 62 of 135 seats, securing a mandate to balance the region’s damaged finances.

Two years of austerity have followed. In 2010, Spain’s constitutional court annulled a new clause on autonomy negotiated by the previous Catalan and Spanish governments. Then, this September, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, refused to improve the ‘pacto fiscal’ that determines transfers to the state government. Much demonised by Catalans, the pact was also seen as imbalanced by independent experts.

For Catalan nationalists, the breakdown of talks left Mas with no option but to call for early elections – and a massive demonstration on 11 September showed Mas there was a popular wind behind calls for independence. In their telling, the constitutional court and Rajoy are, in effect, responsible for Mas’s change of strategy, to call for outright independence.

For a politician, it can be difficult to turn Catalonia’s complex economic relations with Spain into a simple electoral message. Catalonia is Spain’s richest region (it accounts for 18% of Spain’s economy), but, like most other Spanish regions, it has been bailed out by the Spanish government. But, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in three generations, Mas has succeeded in selling independence as the silver bullet to solve most of the problems still faced by Catalans after two years of tough austerity measures. He has been effective, says Jordi Argelaguet, the director of Catalonia’s official polling institute, Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, because he was candid about the need for austerity. “For him, it is quite easy to shape the economic debate as a problem of the relation with the Spanish state,” he says.

But the bid for independence has moved the debate about Catalonia’s relationship with Spain to a new plane – to a debate about the importance of Spain and of the EU to Catalonia. In short, has Mas embarked on a political adventure, as some suggest?

For Daniel Ureña, a political consultant, Mas has abandoned the pragmatic approach pursued for decades by nationalists. “Pujol was always aware of the importance that Spain has for Catalonia, and he was very clever to negotiate both with the [centre-right] People’s Party and the Socialists,” Ureña says. In Ureña’s view, Mas has over-reached. “Mas lacks the vision and charisma Jordi Pujol had,” he argues.

Francisco Sosa Wagner, a non-aligned MEP from the Unión, Progreso y Democracia, one of the parties most critical of Mas, contends that the debate about a referendum is a short-term ploy and a long-term mistake. “Right now, when we are trying to build more Europe, the desire to create a mini-state dependent on Brussels rather than Madrid is quite insane”, he argues.

Mas has led voters to believe Catalonia would become a member state of the EU without a problem. He has suggested that Brussels will be the balsam where Madrid is an irritant. He has fitted Catalonia into a European narrative of a quest for independence by nations such as Scotland.

But has he misjudged Europe and mismanaged expectations? Mas’s plan has generated huge interest in Brussels. When Mas came to Brussels this month to give a talk, he gathered the biggest crowd since Nicolas Sarkozy came as a candidate for the French presidency, the organisers said.

But the reaction within the EU machinery has been lukewarm. A range of EU experts believe that Catalans should not assume an independent Catalonia would automatically become an EU member state. Membership would, in any case, require the unanimous agreement of member states. Spain, which has yet to recognise Kosovo’s independence, is clearly opposed. Its foreign minister, José Manuel García Margallo, also claims that no state supports Mas quest for independence.

In Catalonia, polls suggest that a better fiscal pact would turn supporters of independence into a minority. In Spain, Mas is blocked by a constitution that states that it is illegal to call a referendum. In Europe, he is obstructed by a Spanish veto. Mas’s response is that “his friends are the friends of democracy”.

Faced by these obstacles and weakened at home, Mas faces a choice: to re-think his strategy, or continue his equivalent of Gandhi’s long ‘salt march’.

Jorge Valero

1956: Born, Barcelona

1979: Graduated in economics and law, University of Barcelona

1979-82: Various positions in business

1982-87: Worked in Catalonia’s investment agency

1987-95: Barcelona city councillor, for Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), now part of the Convergència i Unió (CiU) coalition